The Season Six Job In Six Minutes
by Valawenel
Summary: Don't ask. Just... don't ask. Consider this as an intermezzo between PVA chapters for real TSSJ. This, whatever it it, started as an idea for a few fellow writers, some sort of explanation of writing process with a bunch of tricks, and it went awkward after the first sentence. Never came back. I think it's better to put it here, separately, than to whine in chapter 62.


The Season Six Job in six minutes

The Team: We're stuck in the apartment and we can't get out, because describing new places is such a nuisance, and she doesn't like writing about us coming and going because she doesn't know where exactly we live. That's making her nervous.

Florence: Hi there! The evil network cancelled my show.

Mobsters: Hi there! We are vaguely connected with your evil network.

Eliot: Though I can't do anything, as a fallen hero, I will fight off those mobsters and save the girl, because that's what I do.

The Team: Oh, we love him so much!

Now for five chapters of intense 'loving him so much,' mixed with domestic bliss and everybody loving everybody, because they are Family. Oh, and did you already mention that they love each other deeply? Include all the scraps of hook-like info from the previous story so readers want to go and read it, too. Use every dirty trick you've got, and push the troubled hero out in front. Make him smile as much as you can.

Wait, we forgot a plot!

Plot: Fuckyoufuckyoufuckyou – USE ME!

Tension: Nope, wait, you're just a tool for building me up. I AM THE MASTER HERE.

Plot: Fuck you – I'll take over now, I'll multiply, and grow, and spread all over, and eat you alive. Bring forth more mobsters!

Sprinkle everything with tiny bits of inconclusive info about the TV network, security, mobsters and bosses that you might, or might not, use later victoriously, as if you planned that from the very beginning.

Florence: Eliot looked at me significantly; I must fall in love with him at once and forget I have a husband whose only purpose in the story was to prevent me from falling in love with Eliot.

Jethro: Please don't kill me.

The Team: Oh, we love him so much! (Eliot, not Jethro – only Eliot is for loving here)

Don't forget to let your plot go mutant and divide into four separate plots – to avoid whining critics, use The Team to whine about four separate plots, and instead of it being a major flaw in the novel, make THAT a major problem to solve. Be very convincing in persuading your readers that the story didn't slip away through your fingers, but you intentionally made it that way. You are a genius, not a poor idiot without any control over structure.

Add more details, more details, MORE DETAILS! Make them think it will all be important, crucial, that every word is something to remember, and not that you're just babbling in desperation, hoping that when the time comes, you'll be able to catch a few of those details and connect them with something akin to logic.

The Team: We are going to break the law!

Florence: Oh. Alas, alas, the group of criminals is going to break a law for me. I didn't see it coming and that troubles me.

Eliot: She is female! I'm recovering from psychosis and an almost fatal bullet wound, and I can't breathe – I'd better fall deeply in love with her, and go fight mobsters in an abandoned slaughterhouse, because only me, half-dead, can do it, not five grown up and very versatile humans.

Add a scary abandoned slaughterhouse, and then add an evil, evil Mine that poisons villagers – research frantically about silicosis, frack mining, pollution problems, lose five days on it, and in the end use only two sentences about fucking particles. Hate yourself intensively. Design the events in the slaughterhouse with many simultaneous lines of action, that way it looks complicated. Hide the fact that that action was nothing about nothing, and wrap it up in few deep emotions.

Try to hide from everybody that you have no idea what day it is, where you are, or which plot is on at the moment, and add more loving and caring and building tension about every damn thing you can think of. When you don't know how to make tension between people, make a subplot with a plant and a cat, if handy.

Write hysterically in your notebook, trying to connect at least two of your sprinkled details, then build on that and glue as much of it together as possible. Cheat. Cheat shamelessly.

Use glued-together details, hints, info and facts into some sort of action that will deal with one plot-line (but just because you don't know how to use that Mine anymore). Add a storm, thunder, darkness, creepy door screeching, underground places, body parts in boxes, mobsters approaching, RATS, a hero being a hero – and of course make it look clever. Use Florence, as a writer, to talk about clichés, tropes and movie mistakes, so readers think you are doing all that on purpose, because you know the drill, and you are just ironic. Don't let them see you crying. Ever.

Florence: I must show my distress to everybody, so everybody will talk to me and she will use those talks to explain what's going on, and how all of us really feel. And of course, how much The Team loves Eliot.

Eliot: I won't talk to anyone, giving her an opportunity to write about their silent worry about me not talking to anyone, so they could think about everything and tell the readers how tense all this shit really is. And angsty. And dangerous. And how much they love me.

Florence: I must not love him!

Eliot: I must not love her! Look, mobsters! Let's kill some angst in a fight (though I can't really fight)!

Readers: Oh, fuck already!

The Team: We love them sooo much!

Writer: Somebody shoot me, please.

Spend 2 days learning everything about Chinese guns, the Chinese Army, the difference between normal snipers and this one you need, and use only two sentences of a 34 page document you created. Hate yourself. Notice you actually have two mentioned Chinese things and do a happy dance when you see that you can not only glue it together, but make a cool cliffhanger. Try not to show your readers that cool cliffhangers are not something you wanted to do, but something you had to, because there was nothing after that. A Void. Cold and empty.

(In case of emergency, use cat/plant subplot repeatedly.)

More action – more clever cover-ups that will hide major plot holes – raise the stakes, start involving The Feeling Of Impending Doom.

Drag out the last day before The Grand Finale to eternity, because you've sprinkled so much shit all over the chapters that you're terrified that when you finally dare go back and see what exactly you left back there, you have to deal with/ tie it all up before the end.

Try to make your readers believe The Hero will die, though you wrote two short sequels to this story with him alive. Stop eating. Start drinking.

Do thorough research of every unimportant detail of The Grand Finale. Frantically search old notebooks for old ideas for it, because you can't remember shit. Write down an outline of The Grand Finale, and realize you'll need 50 000 words to make it look good.

Finish the last chapter before The Grand Finale, publish it, make banners for it.

Open a new document and name it The Grand Finale.

Suppress a panic attack.

Delete your Facebook account and change your name, delete FF account, delete the story, and never show your face anywhere near the Leverage fandom again.

The end.

PS: Don't worry, Chapter 62 is writing itself… it's already 19 000 words long and it's not finished yet. I will post it NEXT Friday, but probably in two parts, one after another. Together, it's still the Second Part of PVA Finale, and the third one will follow regularly.


End file.
